We pull out of Hillsboro after fiddling with an electrical conundrum for about an hour - without resolution.  Traveled through Ohio into Kentucky, Indiana and into Illinois on the Interstate to make up a little time. Not a lot of photos taken here.  Though I think I would like to visit Louisville without a 60 foot rig.  The waterfront area looked beautiful.  We pretty much spent Wednesday chugging through these states which I found fairly similar in geographic appearance.

The other common denominator was the wind.  The wide open spaces lent themselves to great gusts of wind that certainly increased my awareness of our surface area.  Phil did a lot of two fisted driving.

We found a great rest stop in Mt. Vernon IL.  Ample parking, nature walk, dog walk and amazing restrooms of a design and cleanliness worthy of an upscale hotel. We went through our ritual dog feeding, and prepared cocktails for the evening walk.  Phil proudly prepared an epic white russian which he set on the RV stairs while he juggled door, keys and dog.  Then we had the disaster-in-slow-motion as we saw the beverage get swallowed up by the RV stairs which close automatically when the door is closed.  I thought Phil was going to cry, and I knew he would sulk at the very least.  We pressed on our walk and he had mostly overcome the loss by the time we returned from our walk.  We settled in for the night before a thunderstorm passed over pelting us with rain and shaking loose  the acorns from the tree over us.

Thursday Oct 18

We head West towards St Louis and breeze through the city.

Just as we head out of St Louis we spot a BBQ joint close to the Interstate. It is 11:30 time for BBQ!  We pull in and are salivating all the way across the parking lot.  This is our first meal "out" since we left    
CT. We get a selection of ribs, pork and beef with sides of garlic toast, baked beans, cole slaw and potato salad.  We are giddy with joy.  The meal was yummy on all counts so we cleaned that up and got some pork and sausage to go so that we could revisit this bliss in the RV on the road.

We board the rig with full tummies and head towards Kansas City. We get to Kansas city around rush hour and only have to endure a  minor slow down due to an accident on the interchange we are traveling. We push through to Ottawa KS where we pull into the Wal Mart.  This will be our first night as guests of the ubiquitous retailer.  We walk the dogs around the area.  The wind is still relentless and follows us on our walk.  We check out the store to stock up on dog food and hope to avail ourselves of the restroom.  Now it is nice to always have a clean bathroom on the rig but after seven days on the road we are getting a little concerned about the capacity of our black tank.  Both the women's restrooms in Wal Mart were closed.

We settle in for the night and the wind comes and goes in great gusts.  The RV was shaking and rattling.  We were parked in a sheltered parking lot surrounded by buildings and tractor trailers.  I can't imagine if we had stopped in an exposed rest area. I can see why Kansas is the poster child for houses being sucked up into the winds.  At about 4 am Phil blurts out "I am going to move!!!" well actually there were  bunch of &%$#@ words too.  Then he promptly fell asleep and started snoring.  We both finally got up around 5:30 am and got things ready to roll.

We travel along the plains watching the sun come up and trying to keep the RV from being blown of the road.  While there are some stretches of road that have neat old stone buildings and well maintained fences there will be stretches of scrub land then long stretches of plow.  One thing is consistent the wind NEVER stops. We hear on NPR (between pledge breaks) that the Interstate was closed overnight to the south of us due to blinding sand storms caused by the wind.

Vinny decided he prefers the couch when the road is bumpy.